Black Sea Affair

CHAPTER 27

British lookout post

The Rock of Gibraltar

Lieutenant Jeremy Tomlinson, Royal Navy of the British Empire, swung his telescope down into the broad channel separating the north wall of the Rock from the Spanish coastline.

The telescope swept the waterway. The bow of the long, low-lying freighter sailed into view.

The ship was churning from right to left. Tomlinson flicked the telescope just to the right to keep the ship in view.

The stern came into full view. From it fluttered a horizontally divided red-white-black flag with the so-called eagle of Saladin in the middle of the white stripe.

Tomlinson picked up the phone. "Gibraltar Lookout to HMS Sabre."

"HMS Sabre. Go ahead, Gibraltar."

"We've got an Egyptian freighter entering the channel. Can't make out the name on the stern. I'll leave that one to you, ole boy."

"Roger that, Gibraltar. We are on it."

HMS Sabre

The Straits of Gibraltar

Lieutenant Stephen Stacks, commanding officer of the HMS Sabre, scrambled his four-man crew. Within minutes, the patrol boat was cutting through the waters at Gibraltar Harbor.

Flash message traffic indicated that Britain's closest ally was on the hunt for an Egyptian freighter, the Al Alamein, and that such freighter might try escaping the Mediterranean either via the Suez Canal or the Straits of Gibraltar.

Stacks pushed down on the throttle, and the fifty-two-foot Royal Navy patrol boat planed out into the open water at more than thirty knots.

Sabre cleared the huge Rock's south side. A few minutes later, the freighter came into view, steaming west toward the Atlantic.

"Let's go have a look, " Stacks announced. The British patrol boat sped out into the Straits, and then sliced a path across the rolling swells, straight for the slower-moving freighter.

Sabre closed to within one hundred yards, drawing a long blast from the freighter's horn. She veered to the right, shooting down the port side of the ship, then swung acoss her wake into the churning water behind her stern.

Stacks brought his binoculars to his eyes, aiming for the stern, just under the flapping red, white, and black horizontally striped Egyptian flag.

Al Alamein.

"We've found her."

The Al Alamein

Straits of Gibraltar

The British patrol boat is breaking off, Kapitan, " one of the deckhands announced.

"The British are always pestering freighters, especially Arab freighters, around Gibraltar, " the first officer said.

"Very well, " Captain Hosni Sadir muttered, looking out the bridge at the open waters of the Atlantic Ocean. No other escort vessels were anywhere in sight. No aircraft were overhead.

His first officer was probably right. He'd seen it before himself. The Brits liked buzzing around the Straits in their speedboats like they owned the place – as if they were reminding the world that Lord Nelson had won the Battle of Trafalgar against the Spanish in these very waters hundreds of years ago.

Good.

Let them live in the past. They had no clue that his ship was now a floating hydrogen bomb.

Sadir looked over at Salman Dudayev, who was fiddling with some electric wires inside a black metal box over on the right side of the bridge.

"How is the detonator coming, Salman?"

"My work is nearly complete, Kapitan. Should you like, we could vaporize the Rock of Gibraltar from this very bridge."

Sadir smiled at that thought. If they ignited the bomb now, at least the British would no longer pester Arab freighters entering or exiting the Straits.

"Save the fireworks for our real target. Perhaps one day the Rock will bear a monument that we sailed past it on this day toward our glorious mission."

"Praise be to Allah, " Salman Dudayev said.

"Radar officer, what do you see out there?"

"Nothing unusual, Kapitan. No one is paying us any attention. I predict smooth sailing all the way to our target."

"Very well, " Sadir said. "All ahead full."

"All ahead full."

Al Alamein surged ahead in the water, planing slightly as she headed into the open waters of the Atlantic.

The USS Charlotte Straits of Gibraltar

Alert one! Alert one! Incoming emergency action message! Alert One! Alert One! Incoming EAM!"

Commander Steve "Puck" Puckett, captain of the American nuclear submarine USS Charlotte, looked up at the loudspeaker blaring the announcement into the control room.

"XO, take the conn."

"Aye, Captain, I have the conn, " Lieutenant Commander Todd Swanson said.

Puckett barreled through the narrow passageways, passing sailors who stood back and shouted, "Make way for the captain!"

Puck stepped into the radio room.

"Attention on deck!"

"What have you got?" Pete barked.

"The Brits have spotted the freighter. They're right on top of us, sir."

Puckett took the message from the radio officer's hands.

EMERGENCY ACTION MESSAGE

FROM: NATIONAL MILITARY COMMAND CENTER – WASHINGTON, D.C.

TO: USS CHARLOTTE

SUBJECT: ACTION MESSAGE

REMARKS: British Patrol Boat HMS Sabre has spotted Egyptian freighter Al Alamein in Gibraltar Straits fifteen minutes ago, course bearing two-seven-zero degrees.

Sabre reports Al Alamein making run for open seas of Atlantic at fourteen knots.

Your orders are maintain surveillance of Al Alamein until ordered to break off by National Command Authority.

Be prepared to attack or board by SEAL team on orders of National Command Authority.

Commander Puckett rushed back to the bridge.

"Attention on deck!"

"I have the conn!" Puckett said. "Up scope!"

Puckett grabbed the periscope and swept the horizon. Within minutes the freighter came into view. She was cutting through the water about a mile to the submarine's east, making a run for the open sea.

"Down scope!" Puckett shouted, then picked up the microphone and dialed the sonar room. "Sonar, do you have a read on that freighter?"

"Aye, Captain, we've got her loud and clear. Single screw. Distinctive whine."

"Stay on it. Don't let her out of your ears."

"Aye, Captain."

"XO, get the navigational chart out for Gibraltar."

"Aye, sir." Lieutenant Commander Swanson complied, and the chart was rolled out on a small drafting table.

"Chief of the Boat, OOD, everyone gather around." Puckett called the officers in the control room around him. "All right, let's mark this for the log, " Puckett said. "Here's our position." With a grease pencil, he marked the positon of the submarine. "Here's the position of the freighter. She's headed west." He marked the freighter's position.

"We don't know where she's going, but Washington wants us to follow her and find out. If necessary, we're ordered to board her, or even sink her. So here's the plan. We'll let her pass over us, and then we'll maintain a depth of one hundred fifty feet, and we're going to follow in her wake. We'll use her noise to help camouflage our presence. Be ready and be alert." Puckett eyed his crew. "Any questions?"

There were none.

"Very well. Let's get on with it."

Pulkovo International Airport St. Petersburg, Russia

In a brown leather bomber jacket and blue jeans, and carrying a small black briefcase, Zack Brewer stepped out of the British Airways 767 into the enclosed jetway.

Like the faces of the Russian passengers returning home, the jetway was cold. A wet fog blanketed the land.

Hustling through the jetway and into the antiseptic-smelling hallway, Zack got in the customs line on the left, the line reserved for non Russians.

A stern-faced woman, wearing a green military suit, with a skirt cut at her knees, and clubbed, black leather laceup shoes, stepped out from behind the glass booth and walked down the line of foreigners waiting to come through.

"Commander Brewer!" the woman snapped in Slavic-accented English.

"Dah meen yazavoot Commander Brewer, " Zack stepped out of line and responded in Russian.

The woman raised her eyebrows.

"You speak Russian, Commander?"

"Neemeenoga, " Zack said.

"Your visa, your passport, and your military identification card, please."

Zack produced all three. The woman studied them for a moment. She took Zack's passport and visa, stamped them, and handed them back. "A car waits for you in front of the airport. Follow me."

They walked past the foreigners waiting in the customs line, and then stepped into the corridor of the airport. Two armed Russian soldiers joined them, trailing them all the way to the passenger pickup section at the front of the airport.

"Get into this car, please, " the woman said. One of the Russian soldiers opened the back door of the black Mercedes. "U.S. embassy personnel are in the car."

Zack stepped into the car, sitting alone in the backseat. The car sped forward, sandwiched between two Russian military jeeps.

An officer turned to greet him from the front passenger seat. "Welcome to Russia, Commander."

"Thank you, ma'am."

"I'm Captain Ann Glover, the U.S. Naval Attache to Russia."

"A pleasure, ma'am."

Zack looked out the window as the armed motorcade sped out past the blue and yellow buildings into the thick fog.

"You have to assume everything is bugged here, Zack. Even this car."

Zack thought about that. How would he communicate with his client if everything was bugged?

"You may wonder how you will represent your client under these circumstances."

"You're a mind reader, ma'am."

"I understand you've been briefed on the intelligence situation surrounding the capture of the crew?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You'll have to prepare your defense primarily based on that."

Talk about being handcuffed.

"You have a problem with that, Zack?"

"If those are my orders, those are my orders."

They sped down a freeway, leaving the airport behind in the distance.

"So what do you know about St. Petersburg, Zack?"

"Let's see. The city was known as Leningrad during the Communist reign. When the USSR fell, they changed it back to St. Petersburg. Homeplace of Catherine the Great and President Evtimov. Supposedly Russia's most beautiful city."

"You know more than most Americans, " Captain Glover said. "The city is on the eastern end of the Gulf of Finland. It is known as the Venice of the North because it literally sits on forty-four islands in the Delta of the Neva River."

The fog thickened, but the driver raced through it like he was Dale Earnhardt Jr. or something. This made Zack nervous. He did not want to be driving in such thick fog, let alone speeding through it at a hundred miles per hour.

"Why'd they change the trial from Moscow to St. Petersburg?" Zack tried distracting his mind from the specter of the Mercedes slamming into a concrete overpass.

"Symbolism, I think." Captain Gover shrugged her shoulders. "St. Petersburg is a Navy town. We've heard they want to move the trial to St. Nicholas Naval Cathedral. Maybe they got good vibes from the 2006 G-8 Summit."

Zack did not respond. He prayed silently for the task ahead and that the driver would slow down.

FSB federal detention facility St. Petersburg, Russia

Two hours later

At least in Moscow, the cot was not so lumpy, nor was the cell so dark. Pete lay on his back, alone in the cell, wondering where they had taken him.

He had heard the phrase "Saint Peeterborguyah" bantered about, and assumed that they had transported him out of Moscow for whatever reason, perhaps to St. Petersburg.

But why?

To separate him from his crew?

For all Pete knew, the crew could be anywhere.

Perhaps the Russians moved him to foil a rescue attempt.

No.

That couldn't be it.

It would be one thing for Navy SEALs to rescue someone from a terrorist camp in the Gobi. But in the heart of Moscow? Or any industrialized city in Russia? That would be a tall order even for the renowned Navy SEALs.

Maybe they weren't interested in a rescue.

Maybe the FSB agent was right.

Perhaps America had turned against him. After all, he had surrendered his submarine. Wouldn't it make sense that he would have to be an international scapegoat if that was necessary to avert nuclear war?

What if the FSB agent was right? Were his own children disowning him? He'd not seen them in a year.

It was probably true. The agent had too much information to have made it all up.

What would he do now? How would he defend himself?

He would say nothing, let them torture him, and if necessary, let them kill him. After all, Jesus had not responded to the false charges against him. Why should he? All he could offer was silence.

Pete Miranda, the Chilean-American whiz kid of the U.S. naval submarine community, lay flat on his back, looking up at the dark ceiling. Tears ran down the corners of his eyes onto his cheeks.

The Al Alamein

The English Channel

From the bridge of his freighter, Captain Hosni Sadir looked out across the water at the magnificent White Cliffs of Dover rising high above the sea.

Why had Allah placed such magnificent natural displays in nations full of infidels?

The firing mechanism had now been armed. Perhaps he would teach Britain a lesson for its unholy alliance with the Americans against Muslim brothers in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.

He looked over at the switch, which Salman had labeled Detonator, and smiled.

What a waste to vaporize such beautiful cliffs that Allah had created for his glory.

Besides, London was not that far away. Just a hundred fifty miles or so.

Sadir could not suppress the grin crawling across his face.